I was very lucky to get an interview with Toby Brink.  Toby is the co-creator and CEO of Tri-Valley Innovation Network.

Toby describes Tri-Valley as a leader in innovation because the area has a “tremendous amount of creative people who are actually inventing or patenting new technology.”

The Tri-Valley area outperforms other similar regions, with the exception of Silicon valley and San Francisco, 3 to 1 in terms of patent filings at the state level and 5 to 1 at the national level.

Tri-Valley also has a highly educated population.  42% have a bachelors’ degree or higher compared to state average of 27%.

What is missing is “a culture or network similar to what you have in the silicon valley or san Francisco, that actually brings entrepreneurs, service providers and investors together to collaborate.”

Toby and his team decided to build an innovation network to fill the gap.

“So it’s about creating this network, creating a community for entrepreneurs, service providers and investors to bring more capitol into the tri-valley.  To bring more notoriety to the entrepreneurs that live in our own backyard.”

Toby says that one of their biggest challenges was to find the entrepreneurs, “we were fortunate enough to engage the help of Reena  (Jadhav) with NuResume to help us reach out, through non traditional medium from our standpoint, to entrepreneurs to develop  a sort of a magnet to draw them into this network.

What’s Toby’s dream for the future of TVIN?

 “MY dream would be that our resources, that we provide to our entrepreneurs, live up to the level of excellence that we have in our entrepreneurial community.”

This is a man with a great vision.  Check out TVIN and Toby’s video!